Christ and the Virgin Appearing to Saint Francis

Pietro Faccini

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Faccini's intensely expressive style, rooted in the study of Correggio, Barocci, and the Carracci, is exemplified by this remarkable drawing, in which the saint's convulsed body and agitated drapery seem less a convincing anatomical construction than the outward expression of a turbulent spiritual state. This accomplished design relates to a small painting on panel (oil on panel, 48 x 33 cm, Musée du Louvre inv. 266, Paris, formerly in the Jabach collection), albeit with small variations. Faccini's brief career began when he took up painting at the age of thirty. After four years of study in the Carracci Academy in Bologna, he left around 1594 to set up a rival school. This drawing was once in the collections of the most famous British collectors and connoisseurs of drawings, Sir Peter Lely (1618–1680) and Jonathan Richardson, Sr. (1665–1745). (F.R.)

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art